“I’m Tex Robe,” Mick said. “I made it up.”
“But you made it up for me. And I made Boston Blackhead up for you. There’s no reneging on Blackhead, old buckaroo. Now shut up till it’s your turn, or you’re disqualified. Right, ladies and gentlemen?”
“Right, right, right,” the ladies and gentlemen answered from the sides of their mouths.
“And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Tex Robe singing the great new hit ‘Saxophone Boogie’!”
Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,
Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,
Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,
Oh man, that music’s cool!
You hear the saxophone
When you’re sittin there at home,
Hear that saxophone
And know you’re not alone,
Hear the saxophone
When you’re sittin there in school,
Oh man, that music’s cool.
Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah …
“Let’s hear it for Tex Robe, ladies and gentlemen!”
Thunderous applause.
Then it was Boston Blackhead’s turn. The ladies and gentlemen cheered again. Some booed and hissed. Boston Blackhead began to sing in a quavery, haunting voice, the voice of a ghost, of an ancient mariner.
“Oh no, ladies and gentlemen, not that, any song but that,” the master of ceremonies implored, but it was too late. There was no stopping the song, the same song that Mick had been singing on and off over the past months, ever since I’d brought a book on explorers home from the library, and, adrift on our beds in the expanse of darkness, we circumnavigated the world. Instead of returning the book on time, I’d hid it along with a flashlight behind the radiator, and after the house was quiet I’d read in a whisper about the five ships and two hundred and seventy-seven men who’d set sail, about the Patagonian Giants with their strange words—ghialeme for fire, settere for stars, chene for hand, gechare for scratch — words we began to use, as in “I hear you gecharing your balls, matey.” They passed the Cape of Desire, the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins, the Land of fire—ghialeme — under the Southern Cross, past the Unfortunate Isles, the Robber Islands. There were doldrums, shipwrecks, mutinies, demasting storms. “My men die fast, but we approach the East Indies at fair speed …. I know a ship can sail around the world. But God help us in our suffering.” Their ankles swelled enormously, their teeth dropped out, the flesh of penguins stunk in the hold, they soaked the leather wrappings from the masts in seawater for days, ate sawdust and wood chips. Three years, forty thousand miles, only eighteen men returned.
I sailed with Magellan, ooo-ooo-ooo
Oh, oh, oh,
I sailed with Magellan …
Each time Mick sang it, the song got weirder, rambling without any one melody, its scale sounding foreign like a Muslim prayer, Mick never pausing, even if I laughed, he’d just keep singsonging on into a kind of trance … I sailed with Magellan, oh, oh, oh … boiled our shoes … ate our sails … without teeth … chewed our ship down to the nails … I sailed with Magellan, ooo-ooo-ooo
Oh, oh, oh …
It kept getting softer and softer until finally he faded out. I could hear his breathing heavy and rhythmic and knew he was sleeping. The light across the gangway went out, leaving the room a shade darker. After a while, when the dog felt it was safe to softly whimper, I knew Kashka and Jano were sleeping, too.
Undertow
Swimsuits on beneath our clothes, a towel each, and the bar of brown laundry soap Sir always brought, we rumbled out of the neighborhood in his latest bargain, a Kaiser the green of an army tank — one that had seen combat. At Twenty-third, Mick and I shouted for him to swing onto the flooded side street where a plank propped before an open hydrant made for an illegal fountain, but he ignored us, and we headed down Cermak, stop and go, never fast enough to make a breeze, past the lumberyards on Ashland, and the huge electric plant where Moms used to work, and the turnoff to Maxwell Street, then through Chinatown, with its crowded streets and pagodaed restaurants where it was rumored illegal fireworks were sold.
“Full of tourists.” Sir said. “Only place in Chicago where you see tourists.”
“Why don’t we ever stop and look around Chinatown?” Mick asked.
Sir just gave him a raised brow.
After Chinatown the street turned shabby, trash in the gutters, factories and gutted apartment buildings side by side. Black people sat on the doorsteps, escaping the heat.
“Roll up the windows,” Sir said. “Hot nights like this anything can happen around here.”
We rolled them partway, but it was too stuffy. It had been in the nineties all week. The State Street El station looked as if it were silhouetted against the radiation from an atomic blast. The platform’s shadow stretched in perfect detail, like an enormous negative superimposed on the street. Beneath its shady girders was a bar, its open door like an amplifier reverbing blues guitar. Black men sweating through their shirts and women in silky, sleeveless dresses congregated in front, foaming beer bottles in hand. They laughed and swayed, and the women fanned themselves to the music. They looked as if they were having a good time. We stopped for the light under the slatted shadows of the El tracks.
“Lookit! Lookit!” Sir yelled. “The guy with the chicken!”
“Where at?” Mick whirled in the backseat. He’d only heard about the Chickenman till now.
A bony, brown man, legs like stilts, shirt out over his trousers, strutted down State, nodding left and right as if the street were lined with people watching a parade. A white chicken perched at attention on his head. He passed the bar and stopped at the curb. The chicken stepped from his head to his shoulder, ruffled its feathers, and white droppings hit the sidewalk. Then it gently twisted its neck and rubbed its faded pink comb along the man’s cheek.
The light changed. Sir stepped on the gas. The Chickenman blew us a kiss. I could see black kids running to catch up with him and wished I could follow him, too.
“He goes all over the city with that chicken,” Sir said. “Perry and I see him sometimes at Maxwell Street, right sonnyboy?”
“About every Sunday,” I said. For the last year, since I turned thirteen, Sir had been taking me along to Maxwell, an open-air bazaar that some people called Jewtown. He said he wanted to teach me how to shop. I didn’t want to go at first, until I realized the big shopping day on Maxwell was Sunday morning, and that going with Sir got me out of going to church.
“Maxwell Street is your father’s church,” Moms would kid.
Mick, still too young for Jewtown, was stuck going to Sunday mass.
“That Chickenman had that chicken pecking corn right off his tongue,” Sir told Mick. “Poor crazy goof.”
I remembered a Sunday in spring when we’d seen the Chickenman close his mouth over the head of the chicken as if preparing to swallow it whole. The chicken didn’t seem to mind. That was on Maxwell Street amidst crowds of people browsing and heatedly bargaining in different languages. Sir led me from one rickety stall to another, stopping to pick through boxes of used faucets, lengths of pipe, elbow joints, fittings heaped in musty, tangled piles on canvas tarpaulins lining the curbs. As usual, he was looking for some specific part — a three-quarter fitting — and, as usual, I was supposed to be helping him find it, though I had no idea what a three-quarter fitting was.